PR 

6025 

M35P5 


RCHIBALD   MARSHALL 

A  Realistic  Novelist 
ILLIAM   LYON  PHELPS 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

Microsoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/archibaldmarshalOOphel 


ARCHIBALD    M  IRSHALL 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

A  Realistic  Novelist 


BY 

WILLIAM   LYON   PHELPS 

Lampson  Professor  of  English  Literature  at  Yale 


WITH  FRONTISPIECE 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1918 


COPVIIIOUT,    1018,    BT 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  Inc. 


V 
60 


TO 
THE  DEPARTMENT  OF  ENGLISH 

OP 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 

NOTABLE  FOR  SCHOLARS  AND  TEACHERS  AND 
TWO  CREATIVE  ARTISTS 

THE  NOVELIST  ROBERT  HERRICK 
THE  POET  WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY 


±971JMi 


PREFACE 

The  original  form  of  this  book  was  a  lecture 
on  the  William  Vaughn  Moody  foundation  at 
the  University  of  Chicago,  delivered  on  the 
sixth  of  February,  1918.  A  portion  of  it  was 
subsequently  printed  in  the  North  American 
Review.  It  now  appears  considerably  revised 
and  enlarged. 

W.  L.  P. 
Yale  University, 
Tuesday,  21  May,  1918. 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

ON  a  mellow  day  in  the  early  autumn  of 
the  year  1900,  I  sat  on  an  old  wooden 
bench  in  the  open  air  with  an  English 
gentleman,  and  listened  to  his  conversation 
with  a  mixture  of  curiosity  and  reverence. 
The  place  was  one  of  the  fairest  counties  of 
England,  the  town  on  the  other  side  of  a  screen 
of  trees  was  Dorchester,  and  my  seat-mate  was 
Thomas  Hardy.  I  remember  his  saying  with- 
out any  additional  emphasis  than  the  weight  of 
the  words,  that  the  basis  of  every  novel  should 
be  a  story.  In  considering  this  remark,  which 
came,  not  from  a  doctrinaire,  but  from  a  master 
of  long  and  triumphant  experience,  I  could  not 
help  thinking  that  what  seems  axiomatic  is 
often  belied  by  a  majority  of  instances.  Thus, 
we  church-members  would  agree  that  religion 
must  take  the  first  place  in  our  lives;  yet  a 
disinterested  observer,  who  should  begin  at  the 
other  end  of  the  proposition  and  examine  our 
lives  merely  to  discover  what  actually  did  take 

l 


2  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

the  first  place  therein,  might  conceivably  miss 
the  element  of  religion  altogether.  In  the  same 
way,  while  it  would  theoretically  seem  that 
every  novel  must  be  a  story,  an  honest  critic 
who  should  examine  the  total  product  of  prose 
fiction  for  any  given  year  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, might,  in  a  large  number  of  cases,  easily 
fail  to  find  any  story  at  all. 

As  we  look  back  over  the  history  of  the  Eng- 
lish novel,  it  would  appear  that  every  perma- 
nent work  of  fiction  has  been  a  great  story. 
Robinson  Crusoe,  Clarissa,  Tom  Jones,  Hum- 
phry Clinker,  The  Bride  of  Lammermoor,  Pride 
and  Prejudice,  Esmond,  David  Copper  field,  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss,  Richard  Fever  el,  The  Return 
of  the  Native,  Treasure  Island,  The  Last  of 
the  Mohicans,  The  Scarlet  Letter,  Huckleberry 
Finn,  although  they  represent  various  shades 
of  realism  and  romanticism,  have  all  been  pri- 
marily stories,  in  which  we  follow  the  fortunes 
of  the  chief  actors  with  steady  interest.  These 
books  owe  their  supremacy  in  fiction — at  least, 
most  of  them  do — to  a  combination  of  narra- 
tive, character,  and  style ;  every  one  of  them,  if 
given  in  colloquial  paraphrase  to  a  group  of 
men  around  a  camp-fire,  would  be  rewarded 
with  attention. 


AKCHIBALD  MARSHALL  3 

Sometimes  the  very  thing  that  gives  a  drama 
or  a  novel  immediate  currency  makes  it  smell 
of  mortality;  by  taking  advantage  of  some 
hotly-discussed  social  question,  general  interest 
is  awakened ;  but  when  the  question  is  obsolete, 
what  becomes  of  the  work  of  art?  I  shall  not 
venture  to  make  a  prediction ;  but  I  think  it  is 
at  least  possible  that  some  of  the  earlier  plays 
of  Ibsen,  like  The  Pretenders,  may  outlast  some 
of  the  later  ones,  like  Ghosts;  the  later  ones 
blaze  with  the  flames  of  public  debate,  the 
earlier  reflect  the  light  of  the  stars. 

Of  all  forms  of  literature,  the  novel  has  suf- 
fered most  by  its  desertion  of  art  for  propa- 
ganda. It  has  been  debased  by  its  popularity. 
It  lends  itself  so  easily  as  a  channel  for  politi- 
cal, social  or  religious  oratory.  Every  theorist 
uses  it  as  a  megaphone.  Although  novels  are 
as  common  as  grasshoppers,  good  stories  are 
scarce.  Now  this  desertion  of  art  for  propa- 
ganda is  founded  on  the  fallacy  that  a  work  of 
pure  fiction  cannot  stand  or  ought  not  to  stand 
by  itself,  but  should  lean  on  politics,  social 
reform,  science,  or  theology  for  support.  We 
do  not  insist  on  a  thesis  in  sculpture  or  music 
or  painting  or  poetry.  There  have  been,  in- 
deed, many  attempts  to  turn  Pegasus  into  a 


4  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

cart-horse;  and  unfortunately  the  attempt  is 
almost  invariably  successful. 

I  prefer  novels  that  express  the  opinions  of 
the  characters  in  the  story  to  those  that  express 
the  opinions  of  the  author.  I  do  not  mean  that 
all  novels  ought  to  be  impersonal ;  such  a  result, 
even  when  most  ardently  desired  by  the  novel- 
ist, is  impossible  of  achievement.  The  work  of 
every  true  artist  reflects  his  personality,  and  is, 
in  a  sense,  subjective.  Even  the  coldest  novels 
betray  their  makers'  sympathies,  and  the  stand- 
point from  which  they  regard  the  world.  But 
there  is  a  difference  between  having  ideas  and 
arguing  a  case.  Women  who  have  ideas  are 
always  more  interesting  than  those  who  have 
only  opinions. 

Why  is  it  that  so  many  novelists  write  their 
best  books  early  in  their  careers!  Is  it  not 
sometimes  because  the  original  impelling  ar- 
tistic impulse  becomes  dulled  in  contact  with 
society,  and  thoughts  take  the  place  of  thought? 
The  thorns  of  this  world  spring  up  and  choke 
them.  It  is  by  no  accident  that  The  Mill 
on  the  Floss  is  a  greater  novel  than  Daniel 
Deronda. 

The  most  enduring  novels  come  from  the 
silent  depths  in  a  writer's  soul,  not  from  the 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  5 

turbulent  shallows.  To  live  deeply  is  easier 
in  a  country  where  deep  living  has  been  done 
for  centuries  than  in  a  country  whose  human 
history  is  brief.  If  we  should  really  feel 
chagrined  by  America's  native  contribution  to 
literature  in  comparison  with  that  of  Europe, 
we  might  justifiably  console  ourselves  by  com- 
paring America  with  Australia.  Surely  one 
reason  why  the  British  today  write  novels 
rather  better  than  the  Americans,  is  because 
their  roots  go  down  deeper  into  the  rich  soil 
of  the  past.  Men  of  genius  are  scarce  in  any 
locality,  and  I  am  not  at  this  moment  thinking 
of  them;  but  I  am  constantly  surprised  at  the 
large  number  of  contemporary  novels  produced 
in  Great  Britain  whose  literary  style  bears  the 
unmistakable  stamp  of  distinction.  There  are 
leaders,  whose  names  are  known  everywhere; 
there  are  men  and  women  who  might  con- 
ceivably be  leaders  if  they  lived  out  of  Eu- 
rope. The  best  reason  why  many  admirable 
twentieth  century  works  of  prose  fiction  in 
England  fail  to  attract  general  attention  is 
because  the  level  of  excellence  is  so  high. 


II 


HG.  WELLS  is  not  the  hero  of  this 
#  book.  I  am  holding  my  roses  for  a 
figure  that  has  not  yet  appeared  upon 
my  little  stage.  But  the  career  of  Mr.  Wells, 
whose  novels  have  almost  every  quality  except 
charm,  is  interesting  to  contemplate.  That  he 
is  a  born  novelist  was  clear  to  me  so  early  as 
the  year  1895,  when  one  of  his  best  stories 
appeared — The  Wheels  of  Chance.  Not  long 
after  came  the  novels  of  science  and  socialism 
that  carried  his  name  around  the  world;  he 
was  discussed  in  the  salons  of  Paris  and  in 
the  prisons  of  Siberia.  His  books  were  all 
busy,  noisy,  talkative,  restless;  they  reflected 
in  their  almost  truculent  mental  aggressiveness 
the  mass  of  undigested  and  indigestible  quasi- 
scientific  fodder  that  perhaps  disturbs  more 
than  it  nourishes  the  twentieth  century  stom- 
ach; they  made  many  readers  fondly  believe 
they  were  living  the  intellectual  life.  I  mis- 
takenly supposed  he  would  keep  up  this  squir- 
rel-cage activity  to  the  end  of  his  days;  for  I 

6 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  7 

mistakenly  supposed  in  all  this  clatter  he  was 
incapable  of  hearing  the  voice  of  the  spirit.  I 
used  to  think  that  if  all  the  world  suddenly  be- 
came religious  except  one  man,  that  man  would 
be  H.  G.  Wells. 

The  war,  which  diverted  the  energies  of  so 
many  quiet  thinkers  to  matters  of  immediate 
and  practical  efficiency,  produced  a  rather  dif- 
ferent effect  upon  this  interesting  man.  He 
began  to  regard  things  that  are  temporal  in 
relation  to  those  of  eternal  import.  He  became 
converted — I  have  no  hesitation  in  using  the 
good  old  word — and  while  I  can  see  no  evidence 
of  conviction  of  sin,  for  humility  is  not  his  most 
salient  characteristic,  he  did  come  to  believe 
and  believes  now,  that  religion  ought  to  be  the 
motive  power  of  man.  What  direction  his 
ideas  may  take  in  the  future  I  cannot  divine; 
but  I  am  thankful  for  his  conversion,  if  only 
for  the  reason  that  it  inspired  him  to  produce 
a  masterpiece,  Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through. 
This  novel  is  not  only  far  and  away  his  best 
book,  it  is  the  ablest  work  of  fiction  about  the 
war  that  I  have  read.  But  it  owes  its  eminence 
not  to  its  accurate  reporting  of  the  course  of 
social  history  during  the  war,  for  after  all,  the 
much  admired  hockey-game  is  not  much  higher 


8  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

than  major  journalism,  but  rather  to  the  pro- 
found sense  of  spiritual  values  which  is  the 
core  of  the  book. 

I  regard  it  as  unfortunate  that  Mr.  Wells 
felt  it  necessary  to  follow  up  the  triumph  of 
this  tale  with  a  treatise  on  theology  called  God 
the  Invisible  King,  and  with  a  propagandist 
novel,  called  The  Soul  of  a  Bishop.  For  the 
last-named  book  illustrates  all  the  faults  of  its 
species,  as  well  as  the  cardinal  sin  against  art. 
Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through  is  religious;  The 
Soul  of  a  Bishop  is  sectarian.  And  God  the 
Invisible  King,  while  it  should  be  read  with 
sympathy  for  its  author's  sincerity  and  newly- 
found  idealism,  has  all  the  arrogance  and  cock- 
sureness  of  an  old-fashioned  theologian  with- 
out the  preliminary  years  of  devoted  learning 
that  gave  the  old-fashioned  one  some  right  to 
a  hearing,  provided  of  course  he  could  induce 
any  one  to  listen  to  him.  No  orthodox  evan- 
gelist has  ever  been  more  sure  of  God  than  Mr. 
Wells.  The  novel  was  properly  named  Mr. 
Britling  Sees  It  Through;  and  we  might  with 
equal  propriety  name  the  treatise,  Mr.  Britling 
Sees  Through  It. 

Strange  and  unfortunate  that  Mr.  Wells 
should  think  that  the  religious  element  in  Mr. 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  9 

Britling  needed  additional  emphasis.  A  work 
of  art  founded  on  eternal  verities  will  accom- 
plish more  for  the  cause  of  religion  than  any 
tract.  Solely  from  the  moral  point  of  view, 
Anna  Karenina  is  a  more  impressive  book  than 
most  of  its  author's  subsequent  exhortations. 

The  Soul  of  a  Bishop  is  not  a  realistic  novel, 
for  there  is  no  real  character  in  it.  It  is 
already  on  its  way  to  limbo,  along  with  Robert 
Elsmere  and  The  Inside  of  the  Cup.  But  it  is 
an  excellent  illustration  of  the  fate  that  awaits 
an  artist  when  he  sacrifices  the  truth  of  art  for 
the  enforcement  of  personal  opinion.  There 
was  a  time  when  the  excitement  over  the  ques- 
tion of  trades-unions  produced  by  Put  Yourself 
in  His  Place  was  at  fever  heat ;  but  that  novel 
today  is  almost  forgotten,  while  The  Cloister 
and  the  Hearth  will  be  read  by  generation  after 
generation,  simply  because  it  is  a  great  story. 


Ill 


IN  order  to  illustrate  what  I  mean  by  a 
realistic  novelist  whose  happiest  effects  are 
gained  by  writing  good  stories  with  real 
characters,  I  know  of  no  better  choice  among 
contemporaries  than  Archibald  Marshall.  He 
is  an  artist  of  such  dignity  and  refinement  that 
only  twice  in  his  career  has  he  written  a  novel 
that  had  for  its  main  purpose  something  other 
than  truth  to  life ;  in  each  of  these  two  attempts 
the  result  was  a  failure. 

I  know  how  difficult  it  is  to  " recommend" 
novels  to  hungry  readers,  for  I  have  written 
prescriptions  to  alleviate  many  kinds  of  mental 
trouble,  yes,  and  physical  ailments  too ;  but  how 
can  I  be  sure  that  the  remedy  will  in  every 
"case"  be  effective?  I  know  that  Treasure 
Island  cured  me  of  an  attack  of  tonsillitis  and 
that  Queed  cured  me  of  acute  indigestion;  a 
United  States  naval  officer  informed  me  that 
he  recovered  from  jaundice  simply  by  reading 
Pride  and  Prejudice.  These  are  facts;  but 
what  assurance  have  I  that  other  sufferers  can 
try  these  prescriptions  with  reasonable  hope? 

10 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  11 

Yet  •!  have  no  hesitancy  in  recommending 
Archibald  Marshall  to  any  group  of  men  or 
women  or  to  any  individual  of  mature  growth. 
One  scholar  of  sixty  years  of  age  told  me  that 
these  novels  had  given  him  a  quite  new  zest 
in  life;  and  I  myself,  who  came  upon  them  on 
one  of  the  luckiest  days  of  my  existence,  con- 
fidently affirm  the  same  judgment.  Of  the 
numerous  persons  that  I  have  induced  to  read 
these  books,  I  have  met  with  only  one  sceptic ; 
this  was  a  shrewd,  sharp-minded  woman  of 
eighty,  who  declared  with  a  hearty  laugh  that 
she  found  them  insupportably  tame.  I  under- 
stand this  hostility,  for  when  girls  reach  the 
age  of  eighty,  they  demand  excitement. 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  Mr.  Marshall's 
work  and  life  will  easily  discover  therein  echoes 
of  his  own  experience.  He  is  an  Englishman 
by  birth  and  descent,  familiar  with  both  town 
and  country.  He  was  born  on  the  sixth  of  Sep- 
tember, 1866,  and  received  in  his  home  life  and 
preliminary  training  plenty  of  material  which 
appeared  later  in  the  novels.  His  father  came 
from  the  city,  like  the  father  in  Abington 
Abbey;  he  himself  was  graduated  from  Trin- 
ity College,  Cambridge,  like  the  son  of  Peter 
Binney;  it  was  intended  but  not  destined  that 


12  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

he  should  follow  his  father's  business  career, 
and  he  worked  in  a  city  office  like  the  son  of 
Armitage  Brown ;  he  went  to  Australia  like  the 
hero's  sister  in  Many  Junes;  he  made  three 
visits  to  America,  but  fortunately  has  not  yet 
written  an  American  novel ;  he  studied  theology 
with  the  intention  of  becoming  a  clergyman  in 
the  Church  of  England,  like  so  many  young 
men  in  his  stories;  in  despair  at  finding  a 
publisher  for  his  work,  he  became  a  publisher 
himself,  and  issued  his  second  novel,  The  House 
of  Merrilees,  which  had  as  much  success  as  it 
deserved;  he  tried  journalism  before  and  dur- 
ing the  war;  he  lived  in  two  small  Sussex 
towns  with  literary  associations,  Winchelsea 
and  Rye,  in  the  latter  from  1908  to  1913;  then 
until  1917  his  home  was  in  Switzerland;  he 
has  now  gone  back  to  the  scene  of  his  university 
days,  Cambridge. 

In  1902  he  was  married  and  lived  for  some 
time  in  Beaulieu  (pronounced  Bewly)  in  the 
New  Forest,  faithfully  portrayed  in  Exton 
Manor.  He  spent  three  happy  years  there 
planning  and  making  a  garden,  like  the  young 
man  in  The  Old  Order  Changeth.  Although 
his  novels  are  filled  with  hunting  and  shooting, 
he  is  not  much  of  a  sportsman  himself,  being 


AKCHIBALD  MARSHALL  13 

content  only  to  observe.  He  loves  the  atmos- 
phere of  sport  rather  than  sport.  His  fa- 
vourite recreations  are  walking,  reading,  paint- 
ing, and  piano-playing,  and  the  outdoor  flavour 
of  his  books  may  in  part  be  accounted  for  by 
the  fact  that  much  of  his  writing  is  done  in  the 
open  air. 

Like  many  another  successful  man  of  letters, 
his  first  step  was  a  false  start;  for  in  1899  he 
produced  a  novel  called  Peter  Binney,  Under- 
graduate, which  has  never  been  republished  in 
America,  and  perhaps  never  will  be.  This  is  a 
topsy-turvy  book,  where  an  ignorant  father 
insists  on  entering  Cambridge  with  his  son; 
and  after  many  weary  months  of  coaching,  suc- 
ceeds in  getting  his  name  on  the  books.  The 
son  is  a  steady-headed,  unassuming  boy,  im- 
mensely popular  with  his  mates;  the  father, 
determined  to  recapture  his  lost  youth,  dis- 
graces his  son  and  the  college  by  riotous  living, 
and  is  finally  expelled.  The  only  good  things  in 
the  book  are  the  excellent  pictures  of  May  Week 
and  some  snap-shots  at  college  customs ;  but  the 
object  of  the  author  is  so  evident  and  he  has 
twisted  reality  so  harshly  in  order  to  accomplish 
it,  that  we  have  merely  a  work  of  distortion. 

For  six  years  our  novelist  remained  silent  j 


14  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

and  he  never  returned  to  the  method  of  re- 
versed dynamics  until  the  year  1915,  when  he 
published  Upsidonia,  another  failure.  Once 
again  his  purpose  is  all  too  clear;  possibly  ir- 
ritated by  the  exaltation  of  slum  stories  and 
the  depreciation  of  the  characters  of  the  well- 
to-do  often  insisted  upon  in  such  works,  he 
wrote  a  satire  in  the  manner  of  Erewhon,  and 
called  it  a  novel.  Here  poverty  and  dirt  are 
regarded  as  the  highest  virtues,  and  the  pos 
session  of  wealth  looked  upon  as  the  sure  and 
swift  road  to  social  ostracism.  There  is  not  a 
gleam  of  the  author's  true  skill  in  this  book, 
mainly  because  he  is  so  bent  on  arguing  his 
case  that  exaggeration  triumphs  rather  too 
grossly  over  verisimilitude.  He  is,  of  course, 
trying  to  write  nonsense;  a  mark  that  some 
authors  have  hit  with  deliberate  aim,  while 
perhaps  more  have  attained  the  same  result 
with  less  conscious  intention.  Now  Mr. 
Marshall  cannot  write  nonsense  even  when 
he  tries;  and  failure  in  such  an  effort  is 
particularly  depressing.  He  is  at  his  best 
when  his  art  is  restrained  and  delicate;  in 
Upsidonia  he  drops  the  engraving-tool  and 
wields  a  meat-axe.  Let  us  do  with  Peter 
Binney  and  with  Upsidonia  what  every  other 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  15 

reader  has  done;  let  us  try  to  forget  them, 
remembering  only  that  two  failures  in  fifteen 
books  is  not  a  high  proportion. 

Of  the  remaining  thirteen  novels,  two  at- 
tained only  a  partial  success;  and  the  reason 
is  interesting.  These  two  are  The  House  of 
Merrilees  and  Many  Junes  (1908).  The  for- 
mer was  written  in  1901  but  publishers  would 
none  of  it,  and  it  did  not  wear  a  print  dress 
until  1905.  Meanwhile  the  author  was  trying 
his  hand  at  short  stories,  for  which  his  method 
of  work  is  not  particularly  fitted,  his  skill 
being  in  the  development  of  character  rather 
than  in  the  manufacture  of  incident.  He  did, 
however,  publish  a  collection  of  these  tales  in 
one  volume,  called  The  Terrors,  which  ap- 
peared in  1913,  their  previous  separate  publica- 
tion covering  a  period  of  sixteen  years.  They 
are  amazingly  unequal  in  value;  some  are  ex- 
cellent, and  others  trivial.  This  volume  is  out 
of  print,  and  whether  any  of  the  contents  may 
be  rescued  from  oblivion  is  at  present  prob- 
lematical. It  is  interesting,  however,  that  he, 
at  the  outset  of  his  career,  supposed  that  in- 
vention, rather  than  observation,  was  his  trump 
card.  The  realism  of  The  House  of  Merrilees 
is  mixed  with  melodrama  and  mystery;  these 


16  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

are,  in  the  work  of  a  dignified  artist,  dangerous 
allies,  greater  liabilities  than  assets.  In  a  per- 
sonal letter  he  confesses  that  this  artificial  plot 
hampered  him;  but  he  goes  on  to  say,  "the 
range  of  scene  and  character  in  that  book  is 
something  that  I  have  never  been  able  to  catch 
since. "  He  has  since — with  only  one  re- 
lapse— happily  forsaken  artificially  constructed 
mysteries  for  the  deepest  mystery  of  all — 
the  human  heart.  In  Many  Junes,  a  story 
that  will  be  reprinted  in  America  in  1919, 
we  have  pictures  of  English  country  life  of 
surpassing  loveliness;  we  have  an  episode 
as  warm  and  as  fleeting  as  June  itself;  we 
have  a  faithful  analysis  of  the  soul  of  a  strange 
and  solitary  man,  damned  from  his  birth  by 
lack  of  decision.  But  the  crisis  in  the  tale  is 
brought  about  by  an  accident  so  improbable 
that  the  reader  refuses  to  believe  it.  The  mo- 
ment our  author  forsakes  reality  he  is  lost;  it 
is  as  necessary  for  him  to  keep  the  truth  as  it 
was  for  Samson  to  keep  his  hair.  Further- 
more, this  is  the  only  one  of  Mr.  Marshall's 
books  that  has  a  tragic  close — and  his  art  can- 
not flourish  in  tragedy,  any  more  than  a  native 
of  the  tropics  can  live  in  Lapland.  The  bleak 
air  of  lost   illusion   and   frustrated   hope,   in 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  17 

which  the  foremost  living  novelist,  appropri- 
ately named,  finds  his  soul's  best  climate,  is 
not  favourable  to  Archibald  Marshall. 

The  " relapse"  mentioned  in  the  preceding 
paragraph  occurred  in  the  year  1912,  when  he 
published  a  long  and  wildly  exciting  novel, 
called  The  Mystery  of  Redmarsh  Farm.  This 
has  all  the  marks  of  a  " best-seller"  and  went 
through  several  editions  in  England,  though  it 
has  not  yet  been  reprinted  in  America.  I  re- 
gard the  writing  of  this  book  as  the  most  dan- 
gerous moment  in  Mr.  Marshall's  career,  for 
its  immediate  commercial  success  might  easily 
have  tempted  him  to  continue  in  the  same  vein, 
and  if  he  had,  he  would  have  sunk  to  the  level 
of  a  popular  entertainer,  and  lost  his  position 
among  British  novelists  of  the  past  and  present. 
Curiously  enough,  it  came  between  two  of  his 
best  works  in  the  Clinton  series,  The  Eldest 
Son  (1911)  and  The  Honour  of  the  Clintons 
(1913).  Maybe  the  chilling  reception  given  to 
his  finest  stories  drove  him  to  a  cheaper  style 
of  composition.  Maybe  his  long  second  visit 
to  Australia,  where  he  saw  and  shared  experi- 
ences quite  unlike  his  English  environment, 
made  him  try  his  hand  at  mystery  and  crime. 
In  1911  he  had  published  Sunny  Australia,  the 


18  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

result  of  a  sojourn  on  that  continent,  whither 
he  had  gone  as  special  commissioner  for  the 
Daily  Mail.    There  is  a  good  deal  of  superficial 
cleverness  in  The  Mystery  of  Redmarsh  Farm; 
its  plot  is  elaborate,  with  a  flavour  of  Lohen- 
grin;   the    beautiful    lonely    maiden's    young 
brother  is  stolen  by  a  villain  and  rescued  by 
a   young   hero    who    is    appropriately   named 
Knightly;   a   misunderstanding   separates   the 
girl  and  her  lover,  who  sails  away  to  Australia. 
Unlike  Lohengrin,  however,  he  returns,  and  all 
is  well.    There  is  a  conventional  detective,  and 
a  murder  trial  and  a  shipwreck  and  a  recog- 
nition scene — I  kept  looking  back  to  the  title- 
page  to  see  if  the  author  really  was  Archibald 
Marshall.     It   is    as    though    Joseph    Conrad 
should  write  like  Marie  Corelli.    Yet  although 
some  of  the  characters  are  unreal  and  the  plot 
artificial  and  the  villain  theatrical,  the  environ- 
ment,  whether   in   England   or   in   Australia, 
is  as  accurately  painted  as  in  Mr.  Marshall's 
best  stories.    He  will  not  write  of  places  that 
he  has  not  seen.    When  the  gypsies  are  found, 
they  are  found  in  the  New  Forest;  and  any 
one   who   reads   this   yarn   immediately   after 
Sunny  Australia,  will  see  that  these  distant 
scenes  are  correctly  described. 


IV 


TT  was  in  the  year  1906,  and  in  the  novel 
Richard  Baldock,  that  he  revealed  his 
power.  This  book,  which  will  make  its  first 
American  appearance  in  the  autumn  of  1918, 
contains  a  story  so  absorbing  that  it  is  only  in 
the  retrospect  that  one  realizes  the  vitality  of 
its  characters  and  the  delicacy  of  its  art.  There 
are  no  heroes  and  no  villains.  Every  person 
has  the  taint  that  we  all  inherited  from  Adam, 
and  every  person  has  some  reflection  of  the 
grace  of  God.  There  is  no  one  who  does  not  say 
something  foolish  or  ill-considered;  and  there 
is  no  one  who  does  not  say  something  wise. 
In  other  words  there  are  no  types,  like  "heav- 
ies," "juveniles,"  and  "ingenues."  As  is  the 
case  in  nearly  all  the  novels  by  its  author,  we 
are  constantly  revising  our  opinions  of  the 
characters ;  and  we  revise  them,  not  because  the 
characters  are  untrue,  but  because  we  learn  to 
know  them  better.  Human  nature  is  consistent 
only  in  its  inconsistency.  It  is  forever  fluid 
and  dynamic;  and  although  no  individual  has 

19 


20  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

ever  understood  another,  and  least  of  all  him- 
self, increasing  knowledge  helps  to  make  us 
certain  of  our  uncertainty.  No  man  will  play 
the  part  his  friends  have  written  for  him.  One 
reason  why  Shakespeare  was  a  first-rate  and 
Jonson  a  second-rate  dramatist  is  because  Jon- 
son  created  humours  and  Shakespeare  created 
individuals.  Among  all  Shakespeare's  person- 
ages, Hamlet  is  the  most  interesting  to  readers 
and  the  most  baffling  to  commentators ;  because 
the  latter  try  to  adjust  him  to  a  theory  of 
madness,  weak  will,  or  what  not.  Is  not  the 
fact  that  he  has  never  been  understood  by  any 
one  and  never  will  be,  the  strongest  proof  of 
his  reality?  Some  think  he  lacked  backbone; 
others  insist  he  was  all  backbone ;  some  think  he 
was  mad;  others  that  he  only  pretended  to  be 
mad;  while  America's  greatest  Shakespearean 
scholar  said  he  was  neither  mad  nor  pretended 
to  be.  A  young  gentleman  of  Hamlet's  copious 
temperament,  placed  as  he  was  amid  natural 
and  supernatural  forces,  might  easily  at  times 
seem  to  illustrate  any  one  of  the  above  ap- 
praisals. Indeed  I  suppose  the  sanest  and  most 
resolute  among  us  seem  at  times  to  lack  either 
resolution  or  sanity  or  both. 

The  more  complex  a  character,  the  less  de- 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  21 

pelidable  he  is.  And  everybody  has  some 
complexity.  Even  quiet  Horatio,  beloved  of 
Hamlet  for  his  steady  self-control,  tried  to 
commit  suicide. 

Every  fine  novel  and  every  fine  drama  must 
o'f  course  illustrate  the  law  of  causation — the 
principle  of  sufficient  reason.  But  characters 
that  run  in  grooves  are  not  human.  In  Richard 
Baldock,  we  have,  as  we  so  often  have  in  the 
work  of  Archibald  Marshall,  strife  between 
father  and  son — a  kind  of  civil  war.  This  war, 
like  many  others,  is  begotten  of  misunderstand- 
ing. There  is  not  only  the  inevitable  diver- 
gence between  the  older  and  the  younger  gen- 
eration, there  is  the  divergence  between  two 
powerful  individualities.  We  at  first  sympa- 
thize wholly  with  the  son.  We  say  to  ourselves 
that  if  any  man  is  foolish  enough  to  sacrifice  all 
his  joy  in  life  to  a  narrow  creed,  why,  after  all, 
that  is  his  affair;  it  is  only  when  he  attempts 
to  impose  this  cheerless  and  barren  austerity 
on  others,  that  we  raise  the  flag  of  revolt.  At 
the  deathbed  of  the  young  mother,  one  of  the 
most  memorable  scenes  in  our  author's  books, 
we  are  quite  certain  that  we  shall  never  forgive 
the  inflexible  bigot ;  this  hatred  for  him  is  nour- 
ished when  he  attempts  to  crush  the  son  as  he 


22  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

did  crush  his  wife.  Yet,  as  the  story  develops, 
and  we  see  more  deeply  into  the  hearts  of  all 
the  characters,  we  understand  how  the  chasm 
between  father  and  son  is  finally  crossed.  It  is 
crossed  by  the  only  durable  bridge  in  the  world 
— the  bridge  of  love,  which  beareth  all  things. 
Tolerance — when  based  not  on  indifference, 
but  on  sympathy — is  tolerant  even  of  intoler- 
ance. 


IN  1907  appeared  one  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic of  Mr.  Marshall's  novels,  Exton 
Manor,  which  he  began  to  write  the  day- 
after  he  finished  Richard  Baldock.  It  was 
naturally  impossible  for  any  well-read  reviewer 
to  miss  the  likeness  to  Anthony  Trollope.  If 
I  believed  in  the  transmigration  of  souls,  I 
should  believe  that  Archibald  Marshall  was  a 
reincarnation  of  Trollope,  and  William  De 
Morgan  a  reincarnation  of  Dickens.  In  an 
interesting  preface  written  for  the  American 
edition,  Mr.  Marshall  manfully  says  that  he  has 
not  only  tried  to  follow  Anthony  Trollope,  "but 
the  whole  body  of  English  novelists  of  his  date, 
who  introduced  you  to  a  large  number  of  peo- 
ple, and  left  you  with  the  feeling  that  you  knew 
them  all  intimately,  and  would  have  found  your- 
self welcome  in  their  society.  That  particular 
note  of  intimacy  seems  to  be  lacking  in  the  fic- 
tion of  the  present  day,  and  I  should  like  to 
have  it  back. ' ' 
This  instantly  raises  the  question  of  Victor- 

23 


24  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

ianism,  to  some  a  stumbling-block,  to  some  fool- 
ishness. For  my  part,  if  I  did  not  believe  that 
the  best  Victorian  fiction  was  superior  to  con- 
temporary work,  I  should  not  be  so  hearty  an 
admirer  of  Archibald  Marshall.  Indeed  the 
best  Victorian  novels  surpass  our  best  twen- 
tieth century  novels  in  the  one  respect  where 
we  chiefly  plume  ourselves  on  our  claim  to 
attention — I  mean  in  the  matter  of  sincerity. 
We  talk  about  sincerity  all  the  time,  but  we 
protest  too  much;  the  essence  of  sincerity  is 
present  perhaps  more  often  in  art,  as  it  is 
in  life,  where  its  profession  is  least  urgent. 
Henry  James,  in  the  fragment  of  autobiog- 
raphy called  The  Middle  Years,  wisely  though 
oracularly  remarked,  "Phenomena  may  be  in- 
teresting, thank  goodness,  without  being  phe- 
nomena of  elegant  expression  or  of  any  other 
form  of  restless  smartness,  and  when  once  type 
is  strong,  when  once  it  plays  up  from  deep 
sources,  every  show  of  its  sincerity  delivers  us 
a  message  and  we  hang,  to  real  suspense,  on 
its  continuance  of  energy,  on  its  again  and  yet 
again  consistently  acquitting  itself.  So  it  keeps 
in  tune,  and,  as  the  French  adage  says,  c'est  le 
ton  qui  fait  la  chanson.  The  mid- Victorian 
London  was  sincere — that  was  a  vast  virtue  and 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  25 

a  vast  appeal;  the  contemporary  is  sceptical, 
and  most  so  when  most  plausible." 

On  a  summer  day  in  1914,  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  a  ten-mile  drive  over  the  hills  with  one  of 
the  wisest  old  men  in  America — Andrew  D. 
White.  I  remember  his  saying  that  one  of 
the  most  fortunate  things  that  could  happen 
to  America  would  be  a  general  ambition  on  the 
part  of  the  more  educated  classes  to  look  for- 
ward as  to  a  goal  in  life  to  making  a  permanent 
home  in  the  country.  He  said  that  in  America 
men  who  make  a  little  money  move  into  the  city 
as  soon  as  possible ;  whereas  in  England,  when- 
ever a  man  makes  a  competence  in  the  city  he 
usually  establishes  a  home  in  the  country.  Nc 
one  can  read  the  novels  of  Mr.  Marshall  with- 
out feeling  that  his  books  are  so  to  speak  based 
on  this  ideal;  he  repeatedly  insists  that  life  in 
the  country  is  the  true  life  for  thoughtful  men 
and  women,  and  that  the  most  delectable  season 
for  the  solid  enjoyment  of  it  is  the  winter. 
Nay,  he  takes  the  position — a  position  also  oc- 
cupied by  one  of  our  ablest  American  novelists, 
Dorothy  Canfield — that  the  most  favourable  lo- 
cality for  studying  human  nature  is  the  small 
country  village.  He  says, ' '  Life  in  such  a  com- 
munity as  is  depicted  in  Exton  Manor  is  just 


26  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

as  typical  of  English  social  habits  as  it  was  in 
Trollope's  day.  The  tendency  of  those  who 
have  hitherto  worked  on  the  land  to  drift  into 
the  towns  is  not  shared  by  the  more  leisured 
classes.  Their  tendency  is  all  the  other  way — 
to  forsake  the  towns  for  the  country — and  im- 
proved methods  of  communication  keep  them 
more  in  touch  with  the  world  than  they  would 
have  been  fifty  years  ago.  But  in  spite  of  this 
increased  dependency  upon  the  outside  world, 
English  country  life  is  still  intensely  local  in 
its  personal  interests,  and  quite  legitimately  so, 
for  it  must  be  remembered  that,  if  the  man  who 
lives  in  a  fairly  populous  country  village  comes 
across  fewer  people  than  the  man  who  lives 
in  a  town,  he  knows  all  about  those  whom  he 
does  come  across,  and  his  acquaintances  repre- 
sent a  far  greater  variety  of  type  and  class 
than  is  met  with  where  types  and  classes  tend 
to  stratify.  You  have,  in  fact,  in  a  typical 
country  parish,  a  microcosm  of  English  social 
life,  and  there  is,  ready  to  the  hand  of  the  rea- 
listic novelist,  material  from  which  he  can  draw 
as  much  interest  and  variety  as  he  is  able  to 
make  use  of." 

In   another  important   question   which   con- 
cerns the  art  of  the  novelist,  I  might  applaud 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  27 

Mr.  Marshall's  dictum  more  unreservedly  if  I 
did  not  happen  to  know  of  a  gigantic  witness 
against  him.  In  forestalling  gossipy  identifica- 
tion of  his  leading  characters  in  Exton  Manor, 
he  says,  "It  is  not  a  novelist's  business  to  draw 
portraits,  but  to  create  living  figures,  and  the 
nearer  he  gets  to  the  first  the  farther  off  will 
he  be  from  the  second."  This  certainly  sounds 
well;  but  unfortunately  for  its  universal  appli- 
cation, practically  all  of  the  characters  in  Anna 
Karenina  are  accurate  portraits. 


.VI 


TO  all  those  who  have  not  yet  read  a  single 
work  by  our  author,  I  would  counsel  them 
to  begin  with  The  Squire's  Daughter,  and 
then  take  up — with  particular  care  to  preserve 
the  correct  sequence — The  Eldest  Son,  The 
Honour  of  the  Clintons,  The  Old  Order  Chang- 
eth  [English  title,  Rank  and  Riches].  These 
four  stories  deal  with  the  family  and  family 
affairs  of  the  Clintons,  and  together  with  a 
separate  book,  The  Greatest  of  These  [English 
title,  Roding  Rectory],  belong  to  Mr.  Mar- 
shall's best  period,  the  years  from  1909  to  1915. 
When  I  say  the  best  period,  I  mean  the  most 
fruitful  up  to  the  present  moment  in  1918.  He 
is  in  the  prime  of  life,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  he  may  yet  surpass  himself ;  but  since  1915, 
perhaps  owing  to  the  obsession  of  the  war,  he 
has  not  done  so.  Watermeads  (1916)  is  a 
charming  story,  and  in  Abington  Abbey  (1917), 
and  its  sequel,  The  Graf  tons  (1918),  he  has  in- 
troduced us  to  another  interesting  family;  but 
neither  of  these  books  reaches  the  level  main- 

28 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  29 

tained  by  the  Clinton  tetralogy,  nor  penetrates 
so  deeply  into  the  springs  of  life  and  conduct 
as  his  most  powerful  work,  The  Greatest  of 
These. 

Mr.  Marshall  began  The  Squire's  Daughter 
as  a  long  "short  story,"  starting  with  what  is 
now  Chapter  XII,  Food  and  Raiment.  He  fell 
in  love  with  his  characters,  as  many  a  novelist 
has  done,  and  expanded  the  narrative.  Then 
he  wrote  The  Eldest  Son,  which  is  the  best  of 
the  four  books.  Yet  it  was  not  a  success  in 
England,  and  at  present  both  The  Squire's 
Daughter  and  The  Eldest  Son  are  out  of  print 
in  their  home  country;  they  are,  however,  hav- 
ing a  daily-increasing  circulation  in  America, 
which  is  bound  to  resurrect  them  in  Great  Brit- 
ain. For  that  matter  most  of  Mr.  Marshall's 
novels  are  more  widely  known  and  certainly 
more  appreciated  in  the  United  States  than  in 
the  land  of  their  nativity.  In  The  Honour  of 
the  Clintons,  the  author's  intention  was  to 
"take  up  the  old  Squire,  see  what  all  his  gen- 
erations of  gentility  and  honour,  and  all  his 
conviction  that  he  is  of  superior  clay,  amount 
to  when  he  is  touched  with  personal  disgrace." 
He  discovered,  as  Dickens  must  have  discov- 
ered in  writing  the  Pickwick  Papers,  that  his 


30  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

hero  turned  out  rather  better  than  he  thought 
he  would.  This  third  book  in  the  series  was 
written  under  inspiration,  completed  in  six 
weeks,  and  at  the  time  came  almost  as  near 
satisfying  the  author  as  it  always  has  satisfied 
me.  But  a  friend,  with  true  English  candour, 
said  to  him,  "All  the  ingredients  of  the  cake  are 
there,  but  the  cake  hasn't  risen."  Anyhow, 
the  Squire  rose,  whether  the  cake  did  or  not. 

The  final  novel  in  the  Clinton  family,  The  Old 
Order  Changeth,  shows  the  effect  produced  on 
both  Rank  and  Riches  by  the  Great  War.  Mr. 
Marshall  began  this  story  with  many  misgiv- 
ings, and  it  is  still  not  one  of  his  favourites, 
chiefly  because  "there  are  so  many  beastly 
people  in  it."  But  so  long  as  I  live  it  will  hold 
a  secure  place  in  my  heart,  for  this  is  the  first 
work  of  the  author's  that  I  saw.  Indeed  I  had 
never  heard  of  him  until  I  picked  up  The  Old 
Order  Changeth.  I  started  to  read  it  with  no 
conception  of  the  keen  delight  in  store;  after 
finishing  it,  I  wrote  to  the  publishers,  "Who  on 
earth  is  Archibald  Marshall?  There  is  no  one 
like  him  in  the  world.  Send  me  everything  he 
has  written. ' '  Since  that  moment  of  exaltation, 
I  have  read  and  reread  the  Clinton  books,  and 
each  time  they  seem  better. 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  31 

'To  read  the  Clinton  stories  is  to  be  a  welcome 
guest  in  a  noble  old  English  country  house,  to 
meet  and  to  associate  on  terms  of  happy  inti- 
macy with  delightful,  well-bred,  clear-minded 
men  and  women;  to  share  the  outdoor  life  of 
healthful  sport,  and  the  pleasant  conversation 
around  the  open  fire;  to  sharpen  one's  obser- 
vation of  natural  scenery  in  summer  and  in 
winter,  and  in  this  way  to  make  a  permanent 
addition  to  one's  mental  resources;  to  learn  the 
significance  of  good  manners,  tact,  modesty, 
kindly  consideration,  purity  of  heart — not  by 
wearisome  precepts,  but  by  their  flower  and 
fruit  in  human  action.  To  read  these  books 
is  not  to  dodge  life,  it  is  to  have  it  more  abun- 
dantly. 

If,  as  Bacon  said,  a  man  dies  as  often  as  he 
loses  his  friends,  then  he  gains  vitality  by  every 
additional  friendship.  To  know  the  Clinton 
family  and  their  acquaintances  is  not  merely  to 
be  let  into  the  inner  circle  of  English  country 
life,  to  discover  for  ourselves  exactly  what  sort 
of  people  English  country  folk  are,  to  under- 
stand what  family  tradition  and  ownership  of 
fhe  land  mean  to  them — it  is  to  enlarge  our  own 
range  of  experience  and  to  increase  our  own 
stock  of  genuine  happiness,  by  adding  to  our 


32  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

mental  life  true  friends — and  friends  that  are 
always  available.  For  often  the  friends  of  flesh 
and  blood  cannot  be  reached  when  we  need  them 
most;  perhaps  they  are  asleep,  or  away  on  a 
journey ;  but  the  staunch  old  friends  introduced 
to  us  by  novelists  never  deny  themselves.  Is 
not  this  a  fairly  good  reason  why,  among  all 
the  novels  we  read,  some  at  all  events  should  be 
selected  for  the  immanent  charm  of  their  char- 
acters? I  know  how  uncritical  it  is  to  admire 
any  work  of  art  that  possesses  the  element  of 
cheerfulness ;  but  suppose  our  reading  of  novels 
were  entirely  confined  to  the  works  of  Maxim 
Gorki? 

Why  should  we  always  select  acquaintances 
in  fiction  that  we  always  avoid  in  real  life?  Is 
it  the  same  instinct  that  makes  so  many  persons 
love  to  go  slumming? 

There  is  perhaps  rather  too  strong  a  flavour 
of  tea  in  these  stories,  but  that  no  doubt  is  a 
legitimate  part  of  their  realism.  The  sacred 
rite  of  afternoon  tea  plays  fully  as  big  a  part 
in  English  fiction  as  it  plays  in  English  life. 
Tea — which  would  be  an  intolerable  interrup- 
tion to  business  or  to  golf  among  normal  Amer- 
icans— is  never  superfluous  to  the  British. 
Among  the  hundreds  of  English  novels  that 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  33 

you  have  read,  can  you  recall  a  single  instance 
where  any  character  declined  a  cup  of  tea? 
And,  in  terrible  crises  or  trivial  vexations,  is 
not  the  following  exclamation  familiar — "  I 
am  dying  for  my  tea!"  I  sometimes  think 
that  if  the  house  should  be  destroyed  by  fire 
at  three  o'clock,  half-past  four  would  find  the 
family  taking  tea  on  the  lawn.  I  remember,  on 
a  voyage  to  Alaska,  a  vigorous  old  English 
woman  who  appeared  on  deck  every  day  be- 
tween four  and  five,  and  when  she  saw  the  cir- 
culation of  the  china,  a  look  of  holy  rapture 
dawned  in  her  eyes,  and  from  her  lips  came 
an  ecstatic  cry,  "Ah,  is  there  tea  going?" 
It  must  be  wonderful  to  love  anything  on 
earth  so  much  as  the  English  love  their 
tea. 

Two  months  after  writing  the  above  para- 
graph, I  received  testimony  which  delightfully 
supports  the  view  expressed.  An  Englishman 
informs  me,  that  after  the  big  sea-fight  of  Jut- 
land, he  had  the  privilege  of  conversing  with  an 
English  blue- jacket  who  was  perched  aloft  dur- 
ing the  whole  of  that  terrific  experience.  There 
he  remained  under  orders,  in  the  thick  of  the 
battle,  with  the  bolts  of  death  flying  all  about 
him.    On  being  asked  how  he  felt,  the  young 


34  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

man  exclaimed  with  a  tone  of  regret,  ''Well,  of 
course,  I  had  to  miss  my  tea." 

Not  since  Fielding's  Squire  Western  has 
there  been  a  more  vivid  English  country  squire 
than  Mr.  Marshall's  Squire  Clinton.  The  dif- 
ference between  them  is  the  difference  between 
the  eighteenth  and  the  twentieth  centuries.  He 
is  the  man  of  the  house,  the  head  of  the  family, 
and  it  is  not  until  we  have  read  all  four  of  the 
stories  that  we  can  obtain  a  complete  view  of 
his  character.  He  is  a  living,  breathing  man, 
and  we  see  the  expression  on  his  face,  and  hear 
the  tones  of  his  voice,  which  his  daughters  imi- 
tate so  irresistibly.  With  all  his  pride  and 
prejudice,  with  all  his  childish  irritableness,  he 
is  the  idol  of  the  household.  His  skull  is  as 
thick  as  English  oak,  but  he  has  a  heart  of 
gold.  He  is  stupid,  but  never  contemptible. 
And  when  the  war  with  Germany  breaks  out 
in  1914,  he  rises  to  a  magnificent  climax  in  the 
altercation  with  Armitage  Brown.  We  hear  in 
his  torrent  of  angry  eloquence  not  merely  the 
jroice  of  one  man,  but  the  combined  voices  of  all 
the  generations  that  have  developed  him. 

Yet  while  Mr.  Marshall  has  made  an  out- 
standing and  unforgettable  figure  of  the  fox- 
hunting Squire,  it  is  in  the  portrayal  of  the 


AECHIBALD  MARSHALL  35 

women  of  the  family  that  he  shows  his  most 
delicate  art.  This  is  possibly  because  his  skill 
as  an  artist  is  reinforced  by  profound  sym- 
pathy. The  Squire  is  so  obtuse  that  it  has 
never  dawned  upon  his  mind  that  his  wife  is 
a  thousand  times  cleverer  than  he,  or  that  her 
daily  repression  has  in  it  anything  savouring 
of  tragedy.  In  the  third  book,  The  Honour  of 
the  Clintons,  intense  and  prolonged  suffering 
begins  to  sharpen  his  dull  sight ;  and  the  scenes 
between  the  old  pair  are  unspeakably  tender 
and  beautiful.  Mr.  Marshall  never  preaches, 
never  tries  to  adorn  the  tale  by  pointing  a 
moral.  But  the  wild  escapade  of  the  daughter 
in  the  first  of  these  stories,  and  the  insistence 
of  the  mother  on  a  superior  education  for  the 
twins  exhibit  more  clearly  than  any  letter  to 
the  Times  could  do,  what  the  author  thinks 
about  the  difference  between  the  position 
women  have  held  in  English  country  homes 
and  the  position  they  ought  to  have. 

Of  all  his  characters,  perhaps  those  that  the 
reader  will  remember  with  the  highest  flood  of 
happy  recollection  are  the  twins,  Joan  and 
Nancy.  In  the  first  novel,  this  wonderful  pair 
are  aged  thirteen;  in  the  second,  they  are  fif- 
teen; in  the  third,  they  are  twenty-one.     Mr. 


36  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

Marshall  is  particularly  skilful  in  the  drawing 
of  young  girls;  and  after  one  has  read  Ann 
Veronica,  I  can  think  of  no  better  antidote 
than  these  Clinton  books.  Whatever  may  be 
woman's  place  in  the  future,  whatever  she  may 
drink  or  smoke  or  wear  or  say  or  do,  there 
is  one  kind  of  girl  that  can  never  become  unat- 
tractive; and  the  Clinton  twins  illustrate  that 
kind.  They  are  healthy,  modest,  quick-witted, 
affectionate,  high-spirited;  when  they  come  in 
laughing  and  glowing  from  a  game  of  tennis, 
and  take  their  places  at  the  family  tea-table, 
they  bring  the  breath  of  life  into  the  room. 

In  The  Eldest  Son,  which  of  the  four  delight- 
ful books  dealing  with  the  Clinton  family,  I 
find  most  delightful,  there  is  a  suggestion  of 
the  author's  attitude  toward  humanity  in  the 
procession  of  candidates  for  governess  that 
passes  before  the  penetrating  eyes  of  Mrs. 
Clinton.  Her  love  for  the  old  Starling — one  of 
the  most  original  of  Mr.  Marshall's  creations 
— has  not  blinded  Mrs.  Clinton  to  the  latter 's 
incompetence  for  the  task  of  training  so  alert  a 
pair  as  the  twins.  Of  the  women  who  present 
themselves  for  this  difficult  position,  not  one  is 
wholly  desirable ;  and  it  is  plain  that  Mrs.  Clin- 
ton knows  in  advance  that  this  will  be  the  case. 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  37 

She  is  not  looking  for  an  ideal  teacher,  for  such 
curiosities  are  not  to  be  found  on  our  planet; 
the  main  requisite  is  brains,  and  she  selects 
finally  the  candidate  whom  many  society  women 
would  immediately  dismiss  as  impossible,  the 
uncompromising,  hard-headed,  sexless  Miss 
Phipps,  who  has  about  as  much  amenity  as  a 
steamroller.  Miss  Phipps  bristles  with  faults; 
but  they  are  the  faults  that  spring  from  excess 
of  energy,  from  a  devotion  to  scholarship  so 
exclusive  that  the  minor  graces  and  minor 
pleasures  of  life  have  received  in  her  daily 
scheme  even  less  than  their  due.  But  the  twins 
already  possess  everything  lacking  in  the  com- 
position of  their  teacher;  what  they  need  is 
not  a  sweet,  sympathetic  companion,  what  they 
need  is  what  nearly  every  one  needs,  mental 
discipline,  mental  training,  and  an  increase  in 
knowledge  and  ideas.  In  this  dress-parade  of 
candidates  we  have  a  miniature  parade  of 
humanity  in  the  large ;  no  one  is  faultless ;  but 
those  who  have  an  honest  mind  and  an  honest 
character  have  something  essential.  And  who 
knows  but  what  the  shrewd  and  deep-hearted 
Mrs.  Clinton  did  not  also  see  that  in  the  asso- 
ciation of  this  mirthless  expert  with  two  young 
incarnations  of  vitality  and  vivacity,  both  par- 


19711fi 


38  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

ties  to  the  contract  might  learn  something  of 
value?  Miss  Phipps  is  about  to  discover  that 
the  country-side  in  winter  has  resources  en- 
tirely unguessed  at  by  her  bookish  soul;  that 
there  are  many  of  her  countrymen  and  country- 
women who  find  in  outdoor  sport  a  secret  of 
health  and  happiness. 


Her  bedroom  was  in  the  front  of  the  house,  and  she 
had  heard,  without  much  heeding  them,  the  wheels  and 
the  beat  of  horse-hoofs  and  the  voices  outside.  Now  she 
began  to  be  a  little  curious  as  to  what  was  going  on,  and 
rose  and  drew  up  her  blind  and  looked  out. 

The  scene  was  quite  new  to  her,  and  in  spite  of  her- 
self she  exclaimed  at  it.  Immediately  beyond  the  wide 
gravel  sweep  in  front  of  the  house  was  the  grass  of  the 
park,  where  the  whole  brave  show  of  the  South  Mead- 
shire  Hunt  was  collected.  It  is  doubtful  if  she  had  ever 
seen  a  pack  of  hounds  in  her  life,  and  she  watched  them 
as  if  fascinated.  Presently,  at  some  signal  which  she 
had  not  discerned,  the  huntsman  and  the  whips  turned 
and  trotted  off  with  them,  and  behind  them  streamed  all 
the  horsemen  and  horsewomen,  the  carriages  and  carts, 
and  the  people  on  foot,  until  the  whole  scene  which  had 
been  so  full  of  life  and  colour  was  entirely  empty  of  all 
human  occupation,  and  there  was  only  the  damp  grass 
of  the  park  and  the  big  bare  trees  under  the  pearly  grey 
of  the  winter  sky.  She  saw  the  Squire  ride  off  on  his 
powerful  horse,  and  admired  his  sturdy  erect  carriage, 
and  she  saw  Dick  and  Virginia,  side  by  side,  Humphrey, 
the  pink  of  sartorial  hunting  perfection,  Mrs.  Clinton 
in  her  carriage,  with  Miss  Dexter  by  her  side  and  the 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  39 

twins  opposite  to  her,  and  for  a  moment  wished  she  had 
accepted  her  invitation  to  make  one  of  the  party, 
although  she  did  not  in  the  least  understand  where  they 
were  going  to,  or  what  they  were  going  to  do  when  they 
got  there.  All  this  concourse  of  apparently  well-to-do 
and  completely  leisured  people  going  seriously  about  a 
business  so  remote  from  any  of  the  interests  in  life  that 
she  had  known  struck  her  as  entirely  strange  and  inex- 
plicable. She  might  have  been  in  the  midst  of  some  odd 
rites  in  an  unexplored  land.  The  very  look  of  the 
country  in  its  winter  dress  was  strange  to  her,  for  she 
was  a  lifelong  Londoner  and  the  country  to  her  only 
meant  a  place  where  one  spent  summer  holidays. 


vn 


THE  novel  Watermeads  (1916),  particu- 
larly welcome  to  me  because  the  friend 
who  wore  a  grotesque  mask  in  Upsidonia 
showed  his  healthy,  agreeable,  English  face 
again,  opens  characteristically  with  the  entire 
family  gathered  around  the  tea-table  in  a  sun- 
lit room  in  an  old  manor  house.  This  story  is 
mainly  concerned  with  the  waxing  and  waning 
of  a  marriage-engagement;  the  rich  fiancee 
seems  well  enough  among  her  own  people  and 
in  her  own  environment;  her  lack  of  breeding 
appears  with  steadily  increasing  emphasis  when 
she  is  brought  into  the  circle  of  the  squire's 
household.  The  restraint  shown  by  Mr.  Mar- 
shall in  contrasting  her  with  the  people  among 
whom  she  is  expected  to  live  is  worthy  of  the 
highest  praise.  There  is  nothing  exaggerated, 
not  a  trace  of  burlesque;  little  touches,  shades 
of  speech  and  conduct,  the  expression  at  the 
corners  of  the  girl's  mouth  when  she  is  dis- 
pleased or  unsatisfied,  all  combine  to  lower  the 
temperature  in  her  lover 's  heart.  Nor  is  there 
anything  snobbish  in  this  increasing  coldness. 

40 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  41 

No  matter  how  important  may  be  a  difference 
in  manners  or  social  breeding,  love  could  make 
a  happy  fusion;  it  is,  however,  not  in  one  act 
of  villainy,  but  in  many  trifles  light  as  air  that 
the  young  woman  is  finally,  even  to  the  myopic 
eyes  of  passion,  revealed  as  wholly  selfish. 

Two  accidents — youth  and  cash — give  to  this 
girl  an  assurance  that  finally  makes  her  odious ; 
but  women  who  have  neither  can  be  equally  of- 
fensive. Her  prospective  mother-in-law,  the 
squire's  wife,  parades  the  decline  in  the  fam- 
ily's finances  so  obtrusively  that  she  becomes 
as  tiresome  as  a  flapping  curtain.  When  Lord 
Kirby  is  shown  by  her  through  the  ancestral 
home,  he  escapes  with  a  sense  of  enormous  re- 
lief, saying  to  his  wife,  "That's  an  awful 
woman.  You  hear  about  people  being  purse- 
proud,  but  she  seems  to  be  empty-purse-proud, 
and  I  don't  know  that  that  isn't  worse.  If 
people  are  as  hard  up  as  that  they  ought  to 
hide  it." 

In  Abington  Abbey  (1917)  and  The  Graftons 
(1918)  we  have  really  one  book,  and  the  last 
page  of  the  sequel  makes  me  hope  that  the  his- 
tory of  this  charming  family  may  be  continued 
— I  don't  care  through  how  many  volumes. 
Mr.  Grafton  is  a  gentleman,  and  the  way  in 


42  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

which  he  settles  the  various  problems  of  family 
discipline  and  the  affairs  of  the  estate  springs 
from  his  unerring  good  sense.  His  daughters 
adore  their  widower-father,  but  each  in  her  own 
manner.  And  though  they  are  all  attractive,  I 
know  which  one  I  like  the  best. 

Mr.  Marshall  published  with  The  Graf  tons  an 
exceedingly  interesting  Introduction,  contain- 
ing a  defense  of  his  methods  which  is  not 
needed  by  intelligent  readers,  but  which  may 
enlighten  those  who  do  not  understand  what 
he  is  about.  In  a  personal  letter,  however,  he 
expressed  himself  in  words  that  I  like  better 
than  his  printed  apologia.  "The  Grafton  fam- 
ily isn  't  so  rich  in  varied  interest  as  the  Clinton 
family,  but  I  hope  they  will  make  their  friends. 
I  think  they  are  as  'nice'  a  family  as  any  I've 
drawn.  I  set  out  simply  to  show  them  in  their 
country  home,  and  make  their  country  neigh- 
bours display  themselves  in  the  light  of  their 
critical  humour,  without  much  idea  of  a  story. 
It  turned  into  something  rather  different,  and 
I'm  not  quite  sure  about  it  yet.  And  it  has 
taken  two  books  to  work  it  out." 

Now  the  reason  why  I  like  this  ink-epistle 
better  than  the  formal  preface  is  because  in 
the  latter  Mr.  Marshall  seemed  to  think  it  nee- 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  43 

essa-ry  to  reply  to  those  critics  who  said  he 
ought  to  discuss  in  his  novels  the  economic 
questions  concerned  with  the  tenure  of  the 
land.  If  he  should  by  some  evil  temptation 
make  economic  questions  the  basis  of  his  stories 
of  English  country  life,  he  would  commit  the 
cardinal  sin  that  has  corrupted  so  much  of  con- 
temporary fiction,  the  sin  that  I  condemned  at 
the  outset  of  this  essay.  The  most  conspicuous 
element  in  his  art  is  Charm.  If  some  one 
should  persuade  him  that  he  ought  to  become 
more  " serious,"  his  novels  would  lose  their 
atmosphere ;  and  he  might  find  himself  writing 
like  that  earnest  student  of  modern  movements, 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 

I  am  aware  that  the  most  insulting  epithet 
that  can  be  applied  to  a  book,  or  a  play,  or  a 
human  being  is  the  word  "Puritan";  and  I 
remember  reading  a  review  somewhere  of 
Abington  Abbey  which  commented  rather  sa- 
tirically on  the  interview  between  Grafton  and 
Lassigny,  and  most  satirically  of  all  on  the  con- 
clusion of  the  interview,  which  left  the  stiff, 
prejudiced,  puritanical  British  parent  in  pos- 
session of  the  field.  But  once  more,  Mr.  Mar- 
shall is  not  trying  to  prove  a  thesis;  he  is 
representing  the  Englishman  and  the  French- 


44  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

man  in  a  hot  debate,  where  neither  is  right 
and  neither  is  wrong,  but  where  each  is  partly 
right  and  partly  wrong.  Each  says  in  the  heat 
of  the  contest  something  injudicious,  even  as 
men  do  when  they  are  angry.  But  when  Las- 
signy  literally  takes  French  leave,  we  do  not 
care  who  has  scored  the  most  points;  the  real 
winner  is  the  one  who  is  not  present — the  girl 
herself.  For  when  two  men  fight  about  a 
woman,  as  they  do  somewhere  every  day,  the 
truly  important  question  is  not,  which  man 
wins  the  fight?  The  only  real  question  is, 
does  the  woman  win? 

It  will  never  do  to  make  generalizations  from 
merely  one  of  Mr.  Marshall's  novels.  If  we 
had  only  Abington  Abbey,  we  might  imagine 
that  he  detested  the  clergy,  for  the  clergyman 
in  this  book  is  surely  detestable;  but  in  The 
Greatest  of  These  there  are  two  clergymen  who 
are  admirable  characters,  and  a  third  who  is  by 
no  means  wholly  or  even  mainly  evil.  Like  an 
honest  student  of  life,  Mr.  Marshall  never  con- 
siders a  man  as  a  representative  of  a  business, 
but  as  a  human  being.  No  man  is  good  because 
he  is  a  clergyman ;  but  it  would  be  well  perhaps 
if  every  member  of  that  highest  of  all  profes- 
sions were  a  clergyman  because  he  was  good. 


vin 

THERE  is  an  unconscious  double  meaning 
in  the  American  name  given  to  the  novel 
published  in  1914,  The  Greatest  of  These, 
for  it  can  be  taken  not  only  in  the  Pauline  sig- 
nificance, but  as  the  greatest  of  these  books  we 
are  considering.  It  is  the  most  ambitious  and 
on  the  whole  the  most  effective  of  its  author's 
productions,  containing  also  the  essence  of 
his  religion — charity  contrasted  with  opinions. 
We  have  an  illustration  of  his  favourite  method 
of  portraying  the  shade  and  shine  of  human 
character  by  placing  in  opposition  two  leading 
representatives  of  two  large  classes  of  nominal 
Christians — a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land and  a  minister  of  the  Dissenters.  Mr. 
Marshall  never  wrote  a  better  first  chapter. 
The  reader  is  instantly  aware  that  he  has  in  his 
hands  a  masterpiece.  Every  leading  character 
is  introduced  in  the  opening  chapter  either  in 
person  or  in  allusive  conversation,  and  we  know 
that  Mr.  Marshall  has  what  most  novelists  seek 
in  vain — a  real  plot.  This  book,  which  even- 
tually rises  to  the  highest  spiritual  altitude  at- 

45 


46  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

tained  thus  far  by  its  author,  begins  on  a  note 
of  sordid  sex-tragedy,  as  unusual  in  the  stories 
of  Mr.  Marshall  as  a  picture  like  the  Price 
household  is  in  the  work  of  Jane  Austen;  here 
it  serves  to  bring  forward  the  forthright  and 
self-satisfied  Anglican,  who  little  dreams  of 
his  approaching  humiliation ;  he  is  brought  into 
conflict  with  a  kind  of  Zeal-of-the-land  Busy, 
whose  aggressive  self-righteousness  is  to  be 
softened  by  the  very  man  who  he  hoped  would 
harden  it.  Here  too,  as  in  Extern  Manor,  we 
come  as  near  as  we  ever  come  in  Mr.  Marshall's 
books  to  meeting  a  villain — in  each  case  it  is  a 
woman  with  a  serpent's  tongue. 

The  time-element  in  The  Greatest  of  These  is 
managed  with  consummate  skill.  So  far  as 
the  novel  has  a  hero,  it  is  the  Rev.  Dr.  Merrow. 
He  does  not  appear  in  Roding  until  the  one- 
hundred-and-sixty-third  page,  but  there  is  so 
much  talk,  for  and  against  him,  that  the  reader 
awaits  his  arrival  at  the  railway  station  with 
fully  as  much  eagerness  as  any  of  the  village 
gossips.  And  then,  owing  to  the  Doctor's 
fatigue  from  the  journey,  the  reader  is  as 
baffled  as  the  parishioners.  It  is  quite  impos- 
sible to  discover  what  manner  of  man  he  is. 
The  author  refuses  to  help  us,  preferring  to  let 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  47 

His  leading  character  reveal  himself  without 
any  manipulation  behind  the  scenes.  This 
revelation  is  gradual,  made  up  of  many  little 
details  of  speech  and  behaviour,  as  it  would  be 
in  real  life. 

But  although  the  personality  of  the  man  Is 
not  clear  until  more  than  half  of  the  book  has 
passed,  the  ninth  chapter,  which  shows  him  in 
action  in  London  as  a  public  institution,  is  one 
of  the  most  powerful  pieces  of  prose  Mr.  Mar- 
shall has  ever  composed.  He  writes  as  if  in- 
spired by  the  theme.  Not  only  is  it  a  magnifi- 
cent description  of  a  great  occasion,  its  dra- 
matic power  is  immensely  heightened  because 
we  see  it  through  the  eyes  of  a  young  ritualist, 
to  whom  it  is  as  strange — and  at  first  as  repel- 
lent— as  some  vulgar  heathen  observance.  But 
gradually  distaste  changes  to  interest,  and  in- 
terest to  enthusiasm.  Such  passages  as  the 
following  are  entirely  unlike  the  ordinary  cur- 
rent of  Mr.  Marshall's  style,  but  it  is  a  proof 
that  he  can  reach  the  heights  when  the  occasion 
calls. 

There  came  more  of  these  sentences.  The  spark  had 
caught;  the  furnace  was  beginning  to  glow.  George 
gazed  at  the  preacher  with  his  own  face  alight.  His 
surroundings    were    forgotten.   ...    .If   this   was   the 


48  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

kind  of  preaching  that  bad  brought  Dr.  Merrow  his 
great  reputation,  then  he  understood  its  appeal,  and 
was  himself  moved  by  it.  It  came  from  something  be- 
yond creeds,  far  beyond  differences  in  methods  of  wor- 
ship. It  had  been  heard  in  all  ages  of  the  Church, 
amidst  the  splendours  of  mediaeval  superstition,  as  in 
the  crude  barrenness  of  modern  revivalism.  The  spirit 
moved  on  the  face  of  the  waters;  the  stagnancy  of  mere 
words  was  broken;  there  was  life  and  healing  in  them. 
The  words  came  faster.  The  voice  grew  stronger,  and 
took  on  a  different  tone,  as  if  on  an  organ  a  touch  of 
reed  had  been  added  to  diapason.  The  slightly  bent 
figure  became  straighter,  the  worn  face  younger.  The 
preacher  began  to  use  his  hands — thin,  flexible,  ner- 
vous hands,  which  seemed  to  clutch  at  deep  truths,  and 
fling  them  out  for  the  world  to  take  hold  of.  Soon  the 
burning  words  came  in  a  torrent,  as  of  a  rushing  mass 
of  water  of  irresistible  force,  yet  bound  within  its  di- 
recting channel.  Every  now  and  then  they  sank  to  a 
deep  calm,  but  were  still  infused  with  the  same  concen- 
trative  power.  Such  words  had  stirred  men's  minds 
and  souls  in  long  past  ages.  Spoken  on  bare  hillsides 
underneath  the  symbol  of  faith,  they  had  converted 
kingdoms.  Flung  forth  over  throngs  of  rough  fight- 
ing men,  they  had  turned  bloodshed  and  rapine  into 
righteous  crusades.  Their  power  was  older  than  that 
of  Christianity  itself.  In  the  dim  ages  of  religious 
history  it  had  singled  out  Aaron  for  the  priesthood,  and 
put  him  above  Moses,  the  warrior  leader.  Later,  it  had 
burst  the  bonds  of  the  priesthood  itself,  and  winged  the 
utterances  of  great  prophets. 

Every  page  that  we  turn  in  this  extraordi- 
nary book  lessens  the  distance  not  only  in  time 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  49 

"but  in  sympathy  between  the  Rector  and 
the  Pastor.  The  orthodox  evangelical  chapel 
orator  is  drawn  with  just  the  insight  one 
would  superficially  not  expect  from  a  man  of 
Mr.  Marshall's  birth,  breeding,  and  environ- 
ment. He  is  certainly  the  author's  finest 
achievement,  even  finer  than  Squire  Clinton, 
for  he  is  more  difficult  to  draw.  The  Rev.  Dr. 
Merrow  must  be  added  to  Chaucer's  Poore  Per- 
soun  and  to  Goldsmith's  Village  Preacher  as 
one  more  permanent  clerical  figure  in  imagina- 
tive literature. 

Lesser  personages  in  this  story  are  given 
with  the  same  care  in  detail,  until  we  feel  their 
presence  as  personal  friends.  The  curate,  the 
Rev.  George  Barton,  so  completely  misunder- 
stood by  Mrs.  Merrow,  is  an  almost  flawless  por- 
trait. His  healthy,  athletic  outdoor  nature  and 
the  development  of  his  inner  life  are  both  pre- 
sented with  subtle,  delicate  strokes  of  the  pen 
possible  only  to  an  artist  of  distinction. 

It  is  interesting  to  contemplate  side  by  side 
in  the  reader 's  mind  the  wife  of  the  Rector  and 
the  wife  of  the  Pastor.  Both  are  good  women 
— their  only  similarity.  Lady  Ruth,  a  born 
aristocrat,  with  a  "  temperamental  inability  to 
comport  herself  as  the  busy  wife  of  a  busy 


50  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

clergyman"  is  one  of  the  most  gracious  and 
lovely  figures  created  by  our  novelist,  which 
means  that  her  charm  is  irresistible.  The  less 
admirable,  but  more  energetic  wife  of  Dr.  Mer- 
row  is  so  perfect  a  representative  of  the  busy 
city  pastor's  helpmate  that  we  can  only  wonder 
how  it  is  possible  to  put  on  paper  any  creation 
so  real.  There  is  not  a  false  touch  in  this  pic- 
ture. William  Allingham  wrote  in  his  diary 
after  reading  one  of  Browning's  poems, 
"Bravo,  Browning!"  Upon  finishing  The 
Greatest  of  These,  which  I  confidently  call  a 
great  novel,  I  could  hardly  refrain  from  a 
shout  of  applause. 


IX 


MB.  MARSHALL  is  a  twentieth  century 
novelist,  because  he  is  happily  yet  alive, 
and  because  he  writes  of  twentieth  cen- 
tury scenes  and  characters;  but  he  is  apart 
from  the  main  currents  of  twentieth  cen- 
tury fiction,  standing  indeed  in  the  midst  of 
the  stream  like  a  commemorative  pillar  to  Vic- 
torian art.  He  has  never  written  historical  ro- 
mance, which  dominated  the  novel  at  the  begin- 
ning of  our  century;  he  has  never  written  the 
"life"  novel — beginning  with  the  hero's  birth 
and  travelling  with  plotless  chronology,  the 
type  most  in  favour  since  the  year  1906 ;  he  has 
never  written  a  treatise  and  called  it  a  novel, 
as  so  many  of  his  contemporaries  have  done. 
Every  one  of  his  novels,  except  the  two  unfor- 
tunate burlesques,  is  a  good  story,  with  a  good 
plot  and  living  characters;  and  he  has  chosen 
to  write  about  well-bred  people,  because  those 
are  the  people  he  knows  best. 

It  is  also  well  to  remember,  that  although 
his  best  novels  are  parochial,  he  himself  is  a 

51 


52  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

citizen  of  the  world.  He  has  seen  the  North 
Cape,  he  has  lived  in  the  Australian  bush,  in 
various  European  cities,  and  has  traveled  ex- 
tensively in  America.  One  reason  why  he  can 
describe  English  country  life  so  clearly  is  be- 
cause he  sees  it  in  the  proper  perspective.  He 
is  at  home  in  any  community  on  earth. 

I  call  him  a  realistic  novelist,  because  his 
realism  is  of  the  highest  and  most  convincing 
kind — it  constantly  reminds  us  of  reality.  I 
cannot  see  why  a  well-constructed  story,  that 
deals  mainly  with  attractive  men  and  women, 
and  ends  on  a  note  of  robust  cheerfulness, 
should  have  any  less  right  to  the  adjective 
"realistic"  than  an  ill-arranged  transcript  of 
the  existence  of  creatures  living  amongst  pov- 
erty, filth,  and  crime.  And  so  far  as  Mr.  Mar- 
shall's Victorian  reticence  on  questions  of  sex 
is  concerned,  this  strengthens  his  right  to  the 
title  Realist.  As  Henry  James  said,  the  mo- 
ment you  insist  that  animalism  must  have  its 
place  in  works  of  art,  there  almost  always 
seems  to  be  no  place  for  anything  else.  If  a 
novelist  is  to  represent  real  life,  he  must  make 
subordinate  and  incidental  what  in  some 
novels  dominates  every  page.  If  a  writer  is 
to  describe  events  as  they  really  happen,  to 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  53 

portray  men  and  women  as  they  really  are,  to 
create  living  characters  that  can  be  recognized 
in  modern  society,  he  ought  to  emphasize  in 
his  art  what  life  itself  emphasizes — the  differ- 
ence between  man  and  the  lower  animals.  The 
'curious  thing  is  that  in  many  so-called  realistic 
novels  it  is  impossible  to  distinguish  between 
human  beings  and  the  beasts  of  the  field;  the 
well-understood  likeness  is  stressed  so  heavily 
that  not  only  the  individual,  but  even  the  type 
is  lost.  One  can  hardly  call  so  total  an  absence 
of  discrimination  true  art.  Even  the  most  ele- 
mentary man  or  woman  is  less  elementary  than 
a  beast ;  and  is  it  not  true  that  the  greater  the 
complexity,  the  greater  the  skill  required  to 
report  it  truly? 

And  here  is  a  strange  thing.  It  is  only  in 
stories  of  human  beings  that  our  would-be 
realists  insist  that  animalism  should  be  most 
frankly  and  most  minutely  portrayed.  When 
we  come  to  dog-stories — of  which  there  are 
many — the  element  of  sex  is  as  a  rule  wholly 
omitted.  Yet  surely  this  is  more  salient  in  the 
life  of  a  dog  than  in  the  life  of  a  man. 

Archibald  Marshall  is  a  realist.  He  repre- 
sents cultivated  men  and  women  as  we  saw 
them  yesterday,  and  as  we  shall  see  them  to- 


54  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

morrow.  He  seldom  disappoints  us,  for  among 
all  living  novelists,  whilst  he  is  not  the  greatest, 
he  is  the  most  reliable.  It  is  difficult  to  analyse 
the  extraordinary  charm  of  his  stories,  for  they 
are  simpler  than  simplicity.  He  takes  us  liter- 
ally into  the  bosom  of  a  family,  where  each 
member  has  a  distinct  individuality,  and  the 
novel  progresses  like  beautiful  voices  with 
orchestral  accompaniment — each  individual  in 
turn  singing  an  air,  while  the  family  fortunes 
supply  the  harmony.  To  read  his  books  is  to 
associate  with  people  whom  it  is  highly  im- 
portant to  know — not  because  of  their  social 
standing,  but  because  of  their  solid  worth.  His 
good  characters  are  fundamentally  good.  They 
are  seldom  brilliant,  and  almost  never  re- 
formers. They  are  more  altruistic  than  phil- 
anthropic. They  possess  the  fine  old  virtues 
of  purity,  wholesomeness,  generosity,  loving- 
kindness,  honesty,  loyalty,  tact,  consideration; 
such  persons  are  always  lovable  in  life,  which 
is  why  they  are  lovable  in  these  books.  His 
heroes  are  not  saviours  of  society,  they  are 
simply  good  companions,  be  the  weather  fair 
or  foul;  and  we  are  never  sickened  by  the  dia- 
phanous veneer  of  sentimentality.  His  villains 
seldom  break  the  law  of  the  land,  and  do  not 


ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL  55 

• 

reek  of  melodrama.  They  are  inconsiderate, 
garrulous,  inopportune,  stupid,  meddling,  of- 
ficiously helpful,  which  is  sometimes  worse  than 
deliberate  hostility.  Mrs.  Prentice  in  Exton 
Manor  is  his  most  offensive  specimen,  and  ac- 
cording to  the  wisdom  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs, 
she  is  one  of  the  four  things  for  which  the  earth 
is  disquieted — "an  odious  woman  when  she  is 
married."  These  respectable  villains,  who 
often  cause  more  suffering  than  professional 
criminals,  receive  the  punishment  of  unpopu- 
larity. But  in  most  of  his  characters  the  ele- 
ments are  more  kindly  mixed.  We  have  on 
every  page  the  delight  of  recognition — the  fig- 
ures are  so  perfectly  drawn  that  we  are  under 
the  illusion  that  they  are  alive. 

Although  these  stories  are  never  explicitly 
didactic,  they  are  ethically  as  well  as  artis- 
tically true.  Beneath  the  surface  of  light  con- 
versation and  trivial  incident  we  find  an  idea 
that  works  for  righteousness.  This  idea  is  so 
variously  and  so  frequently  illustrated  that  I 
think  it  must  be  the  foundation  of  the  author's 
philosophy  of  life  and  conduct.  He  would  have 
us  believe  that  different  individuals,  different 
social  classes,  different  communities  dislike  and 
distrust  each  other  mainly  through  ignorance. 


56  ARCHIBALD  MARSHALL 

He  would  not  say  in  the  old  phrase,  to  under- 
stand is  to  forgive,  he  would  say  something 
without  any  taint  of  condescension,  something 
finer  and  more  fruitful— to  understand  is  to 
respect,  to  admire,  to  love.  The  inefficient  aris- 
tocrat and  the  pushing  millionaire  despise  each 
other,  the  haughty  Churchman  and  the  pious 
Dissenter  distrust  each  other's  motives  until 
they  are  brought  by  the  force  of  circumstances 
into  an  unescapable  daily  intimacy;  the  result 
of  which  to  both  is  surprising  and  agreeable. 
Apparently  what  we  all  need  is  more  imagi- 
nation, more  intelligence.  These  novels  make 
a  combined  attack  on  the  last  infirmity  of  both 
noble  and  ignoble  minds,  that  last  citadel  of 
stupidity— Prejudice. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

English 

publication  American 

Peter  Binney,  Undergraduate 1899  .... 

The  House  of  Merrilees 1905  1905 

Richard   Baldock 1906  1918 

Exton  Manor 1907  1908 

Many  Junes 1908  1919 

The  Squire's  Daughter 1909  1912 

The  Eldest  Son 1911  1911 

Sunny  Australia  (sketches  of  travel)  1911  .... 

The  Mystery  of  Redmarsh  Farm. . .  1912  

The  Honour  of  the  Clintons 1913  1913 

The  Terrors  (short  stories) 1913  .... 

The    Greatest    of    These     (Roding 

Rectory) 1914  1914 

The  Old  Order  Changeth  (Rank  and 

Riches) 1915  1915 

Upsidonia    1915  1917 

Watermeads    1916  1916 

Abington   Abbey 1917  1917 

The  Graftons 1918  1918 


57 


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